Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much his Department spent on (a) recruitment agency fees, (b) outplacement agency fees for displaced or redundant staff and (c) staff training in each of the last five years.

The Department does use recruitment agencies to recruit some Senior Civil Servants (SCS). The table below sets out how much was spent on recruitment agency fees for SCS appointments, for the last five financial years. In addition, as part of the Department’s recruitment process, at SCS level, shortlisted candidates are required to undergo psychometric assessment prior to their interview. These assessments are carried out by recruitment agents (or their representatives) and form part of our overall recruitment costs. Advertising costs are not included.

The Department did use an outplacement agency to outplace some displaced or redundant staff. The table below presents how much was spent on this service with the company concerned in the past five financial years.

The Department is committed to developing its staff and equipping them with the skills and knowledge to carry out their work.

The Department complies with Cabinet Office procurement controls and as such the preferred supplier for training is Civil Service Learning, who manage the central procurement of “core curriculum” training.

Local administration budgets for directorates and their constituent sections will include learning and development expenditure. Learning and development is funded from both a central Departmental budget and Directorate budgets. Directorates have the discretion to use their budgets to fund professional and technical training relevant to their business needs.

The total spend on staff training in the last five years, combining both central spend by the Learning and Development section of Human Resources (HR) and spend by local Directorates, mentioned above, is presented in the table below, The figures in the table below include payments for Civil Service HR expert services which in turn includes Civil Service Learning fees.

The information in all the above tables does not include costs incurred for programme-funded, non-permanent workers or those for workers employed by the Department’s executive agencies.